Marketing professionals participating in Casual Connect this year will be well aware that Asia is a giant in the gaming industry and provides many opportunities for effective campaigns in a wide variety of gaming spheres. Due to a long-standing ban on consoles in China (which was lifted last year), the market for PC games in Asia is enormous and mobile gaming is experiencing significant growth yearly. But did you know that, in the meantime, blogging is becoming a phenomenon of epic proportions in the same region? It’s time to take advantage! BlogsRelease co-founder Dani Finkelstein and community director Sophie Kouropatov explain how.
Blogging for All
Consider these amazing statistics: While 77 percent of online users worldwide visit blogs, almost half of all online users in Asia have a blog.
Nearly 60 percent of those users are under the age of 25 - a key demographic for gaming marketers. Blogging is becoming a permanent part of everyday life in countries like Japan, Korea, and India. Just like with social media, blogging platforms offer incredible opportunities for marketers and advertisers.
The Numbers Have It
Asia makes up a whopping 48 percent of the entire global games market, with over 500 million players in China alone.
With such large numbers setting up campaigns can be a trying endeavour. However, by identifying key blogger influencers, marketers can have instant access to thousands of relevant customers. In the United States alone, 61% of customers have made a purchase based on a blog post. One post by an influential blogger, if shared and promoted correctly, can turn into a whole campaign in itself.
For example, just 50 bloggers were approached for L’Oréal’s Miss Manga Mascara blogger outreach campaign. Within a week 200 content items were created (including blog posts, videos, and shares) and over 120, 000 unique views were logged after L’Oréal uploaded a request for product reviews on BlogsRelease, a platform where brands can connect with bloggers. Other big brands like Wendy’s and Ford are also taking advantage of the blogger market with successful campaigns.
Reaching Bloggers
Of course, trying to manually single out popular influencers among millions of blogs on vast platforms like Sina, Baidu, and Ameba is more than a little unrealistic. First of all, with every campaign, consider what kind of blogger would be interested. If you’re promoting a new game for PC, it would be more effective to target bloggers who focus on PC gaming. Sometimes niche bloggers can do much more for your product than even journalists, because they are willing to give you more coverage and their audience is part of the exact target market you want to access. Two ways to ensure this is to approach bloggers with products to review and invitations to events. This is why marketers are increasingly turning to tools like BlogsRelease, where brands can post news, product review requests, and event invitations to bloggers, in order to quickly find and reach out to influencers with relevant interests in their desired locations.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify ignoring the Asian blogging community. With the amount of gamers and bloggers in Asia, the intersection of these interests has resulted in a significant number of influential gaming blogs (such as Indian Video Gamer, KotakGame, and GameSaku, which was recently acquired by Tech in Asia). What are your favorite gaming blogs in Asia? Let us know in the comments!
Looking to reach out to gaming and tech bloggers? As proud media partners of Casual Connect, BlogsRelease is offering all participants the chance to share a free press release with thousands of bloggers around the world. For more details, click here.
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